Here is someone working for the ABC, from a Labor background as Hawke’s press secretary, who has written about the rise and fall of a Labor Prime Minister with all the distortions and omissions worthy of the most disingenuous right wing hack.

Joyce’s act is to portray himself as a rube who, through some stroke of luck, has popped up in the sophisticated Finance portfolio, but being the honest and simple guy he is, still can’t help saying what he really thinks.

It is classic Rudd. Not just making a mockery of what was supposed to be the fault-lines of the Australian political system, but locking the opposition increasingly into the international framework that is setting the domestic debate.